Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

Need to get a photo of the temperature control lit...that one being missing is annoying my OCD.

Took the Activa into my trusted local garage this afternoon to get a realistic to do list.

Exhibit A: The list of MOT related MOT work BL provided.

Exhibit B: The Fail sheet provided by my usual garage.

Slightly more realistic...

[Zelandeth]

I know that the seats in the Xantia are really soft and squidgy compared to anything these days, so it is kind of ridiculous that they feel really firm compared to those in the Jag.

Speaking of the Jag, the mission to refinish the wood trim has now started.

After a bit of head scratching I managed to figure out how to get a couple of the bits of trim off.





The piece that lives behind the hazard/rear window demister switch needs a little reconstructive surgery. The veneer has pretty much completely detached from the actual trim piece.



The reason for this having happened became pretty apparent once the little trim panel was removed.



I think someone in the past has been a little over enthusiastic when they were trying to get either of those switches out.

Annoyingly there is one bit missing so I'll need to have a think about what to do with this bit. Have a few ideas though. For now I've just given the metal backing a quick bit of satin black so it looks less unsightly in the meantime.



Annoyingly the paint and varnish remover I have here seems to be utterly useless...after sitting for an hour it's not even slightly softened the existing varnish, even at the edges. So need to try to find something more effective tomorrow.



Will lift the cabin so much once it's done though.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Just in case you have been gripped by a wider XJS bug last Saturday at Anglia Car Auctions these converitbles fetched decent prices

Screenshot

Regards Neil

[myglaren]

Cellulose thinners might shift the varnish but could possibly be a bit harsh on the veneer too.
Try it on a friends car first.

[Hell Razor5543]

I did an e-bay search for XJS wood trims. Ouch! Mind you, most of them were from the USA.

[xantia_v6]

Those little plates around the switches are very fragile, I looked through my box of XJS-HE bits and pieces, but only found one which is also damaged beyond repair, I think I gave my good spares away a few years ago.

You might consider a visit to the spring spares day. http://www.jaguarsparesdays.co.uk I don't know how much XJ-S stuff there is these days, it is a few years since I have been, but it is an experience.

[Zelandeth]

After quite a bit of experimentation I eventually came to the conclusion that the correct formula required to remove the old finish from the woodwork is a combination of carefully applied heat and patience. I'm sure if I could get hold of some proper old school Nitromors (the can we thought I'd found it turned out had dissolved the bottom out of the tin) or similar I'm sure it would be sorted in minutes...but the modern water based nonsense is a total waste of space when up against what I am pretty sure at this point is a polyeurythane clearcoat.

The starting point:



After the old clear coat had been removed it was given a gentle rub down with 1200 grit sand paper just to remove any bits I had missed and to key the surface ready for the application of the new coating.



Which is a little disheartening to be honest as it ends up looking awful when the first couple of coats are applied.



However after a few coats it did start to look better, though spraying one coat when the ambient temperature was too cold resulted in a satin-like finish at close of play a couple of days ago.



Today though it felt like we actually made decent progress towards it looking decent, reasonably warm but breezy weather was ideal to get several coats added to it which has resulted in a pretty decent finish.





I think this one better demonstrates the degree of gloss we've managed to attain (even though the camera has helpfully focused on the wrong surface).



Those pieces are sitting in the spare room just now safely tucked away while the clearcoat fully hardens. Given I now have a workflow which works reasonably well for this I'll look to get the remaining trim removed and put through a similar treatment shortly. While this isn't maybe a factory perfect finish I think it's fair to say that it will look a whole lot better in the car than the flaky mess that's currently in there.

[Zelandeth]

First two pieces of trim have now been reinstalled in the car. This gives us a nice "before and after" set of images I think.







Definitely think this will be worth the effort once all the woodwork has had this treatment and is back in the car.

The offside air vent surround and the glove compartment lid have now been brought in and are waiting on their turn to be given a fresh clear coat.



Stripping the old stuff off is fiddly and time consuming but not really difficult.



I suspect I'll be finding bits of that stuff for years...

Tomorrow we should hopefully get this looking nice and shiny again.

[white exec]

The new finish looks good, and nicely deals with the very orangery look of the old item.

[Hell Razor5543]

That walnut now has the warm feeling of an English country pub.

I wonder if it might be worth getting in touch with Car S.O.S.? They did a Triumph Herald where the woodwork needed restoring, and they went to a specialist company who could also make up any missing trims.

[Zelandeth]

Hoping I'll be able to track down a little bit of veneer offcut somewhere to use to recreate to switch panel trims.

The offside air vent surround and the glove box lid had their first couple of coats of lacquer earlier today.



Will still need several more coats but it's getting there. I do love the colour and depth that this has taken on. It's impossible to see in a photo, but there is a really strong three dimensional effect when direct light hits the grain in the wood.



Once this two are done it will just leave the door cappings to be tackled. Unfortunately getting those off involves pretty much entirely stripping down the door cards, so a bit more involved than the dash trims.

I noticed yesterday that there was a bit of a burning oil smell when parking up at home but didn't think too much of it. Today though I've found evidence that we do appear to have a leak...these spots weren't there a couple of days ago.



Hmm...I did have a quick look around and couldn't see anything immediately obvious. No visible drop in any fluid levels, though it does hold enough of both engine and gearbox oil that it would take quite a bit to drop the level on the dipsticks.



I'll have a better crawl around tomorrow and see if I can pinpoint a major source. Though there are quite a few minor leaks (both cam covers weep to name two), about time the oil was changed anyway... usually is done virtually the moment a new car hits my driveway. Probably get funny looks from my motor factor when looking for oil this thick!



Crossing my fingers it's nothing difficult to sort. Oil cooler unions will be the first thing to be checked as they will have been disturbed I believe when the radiator was changed a couple of months ago.

[white exec]

Some of us still use 20W-50 all the time, with no discernable wear. Oil change every 6k mi/10k km.
Price is a bonus, too!

[Hell Razor5543]

You tell the guy at the motor factor what car you want it for and they will probably ask to have a go in it!

[white exec]

Remember once going into Half***ds for a set of spark plugs for our V8 3500S.
Found that they only had seven of them on the shelf, so asked the young lady serving if they had another one.
You need eight, then? she queried. So how many cars do you have?

[Zelandeth]

Little package arrived this morning containing the replacement switches for the Jag. Not hard to spot the difference is it?





The other two have a little bit of crazing in the lenses but nothing that sticks out so badly so I'll keep my eyes peeled for a hazard and interior light 2 switch turning up cheap. I'm guessing these are prone to cracking like this based on the mental prices that new ones seem to be advertised at on eBay. I don't care how special you think it is..I ain't paying £75 for a switch!

Second task was reinstating the glove compartment lid...



Fair to say that's improved the interior immeasurably. I look forward to getting the strips on the doors done too...not so much looking forward to having to strip them down to get the strips off though!

Main useful job for the day though was to try to track down where the oil leak I noticed yesterday was coming from.

Despite looking quite impressive based on the spatter on the back of the car and the smoke that had come off the exhaust, there wasn't any obvious drop in the engine bay.

Engine oil still sitting on full (reads about 1/2" high here because of the slope of our drive).



Gearbox oil likewise is sitting on maximum (if anything slightly over full). Not horrible burnt looking fluid either which is nice to see.



Power steering fluid is sitting on the "add" mark, but it hasn't moved since I got the car.

Looking underneath the car didn't immediately reveal anything obvious. The marks on the ground were from where oil has dropped from the exhaust fasteners and heat shields.





The complexity of the rear suspension of this car is quite something. Having seen it on diagrams is one thing, but it will take a while for the novelty of looking under the back of my own car and seeing a pair of springs on each wheel to wear off.



There were a couple of areas which I wanted to take a closer look at.

The rear of the left hand cylinder bank definitely has a leak from the cam cover.



Looking at it I suspect that the connection to the air conditioning expansion valve will want checking out given it's visibly oily. Hopefully being a flare nut it will just need to be nipped up a bit.

The other area that's obviously oily is the front end of the right hand bank. While these areas are only, neither looked wet enough to explain the degree of splatter on the back of the car I'd seen.

A common area to cause issues are the pipes to/from the front mounted oil cooler...which looks absolutely disgusting, but in half an hour of the engine running didn't produce a single actual drip...so I think a thorough session with the degreaser and pressure washer might be in order here to pin down where this is coming from.



So definitely attention needed there but I'm pretty sure it isn't the main issue.

Having a dig around did reveal a horrific mess below the brake servo though due to the small fluid leak spotted earlier.



That will want cleaning up sooner rather than later.

Eventually after the engine had been running for about 30 minutes I spotted a fresh drip on the driveway away over on the far side of the car.



A closer look at the new drop revealed that it was definitely engine oil.



This is right to the rear end of the left cylinder bank, and looking up from by that exhaust flange shows this assembly up there...





This is the engine end of the lines to the oil cooler.

My guess is we've got a failed seal in there which is allowing oil to be forced out at higher engine speeds.

Given this is a bit of a pig to get to without a ramp I may well chuck this at my local garage to sort as it shouldn't really be too bad a job on a four post lift. I'll probably just get a set of seals for everything involved here so I've got everything necessary in hand. It's probably the difference between it taking me two to four hours scrambling around on my back getting oil in my eyes versus it taking them fifteen minutes on the lift.

Finally actually got the service items ordered...



I thought I'd already done this...however it turns out I'm an idiot and while I had the items in my basket I'd never clicked the button to complete the order. Yes I am indeed an idiot.